War goes on despite conciliation move – Chad rebels

Dec 18, 2006 (DAKAR) — Chad rebel groups waging war against President Idriss Deby on Monday dismissed reconciliation talks between one insurgent leader and the government as a “non-event” and vowed to launch further attacks.

Deby on Sunday received Mahamat Nour Abdelkerim, a rebel military chief whose forces raided the capital N’Djamena in April in a daring attack that brought the anti-Deby insurgency to the attention of the international community.

Chadian presidency officials told Reuters the two men, who met in the eastern Chadian town of Guereda near the Sudan border, discussed the possibility of Nour, an ex-army captain, returning to the government side.

But while the government sought to portray the meeting as the fruit of an “open arms” reconciliation policy, other rebel groups united in an anti-Deby alliance said it would mean no let-up in their recently intensified military campaign.

“For us, it’s a non-event. It will have no impact on the military front,” Makaida Nguebla, a spokesman in Dakar for the National Rally for Democracy (RND), one of the groups in the alliance, told Reuters.

Nguebla and other rebel spokesmen said Nour had become isolated since April from other Chadian insurgent groups, whose ranks had been swelled by fighters abandoning his United Front for Democratic Change (FUC), which was split by factional feuds.

“As far as the political-military opposition (against Deby) is concerned, he (Nour) represents almost nothing,” said Yaya Dillo Djerou, another spokesman for the unified rebel command.

“The rebellion is continuing, until there is a change of regime,” Djerou, speaking by satellite phone, said.

Following his isolation from the other rebel groups, Nour signalled his change of heart at the end of November by calling for a national political dialogue in Chad.

The rebel alliance still under arms includes the Union of Forces for Democracy and Development (UFDD), the Rally of Democratic Forces (RAFD), and the Platform for Change, National Unity and Democracy (SCUD).

Their fighters recently attacked and briefly occupied several eastern towns, piling pressure on Deby’s forces after a wave of ethnic violence which killed hundreds and forced the government to declare a state of emergency last month.

Deby accuses neighbouring Sudan of backing the rebels.

The Sudanese government denies these charges and has in turn accused Deby of backing insurgents opposed to Khartoum in Sudan’s violence-torn Darfur region, where tens of thousands have been killed in political and ethnic conflict since 2003.

The Chadian rebel spokesmen rejected government claims that the army had defeated them in the recent heavy fighting in the east, saying they had merely carried out a tactical withdrawal.

“Our commanders are discussing launching further military action,” Nguebla said.

Nour’s April attack on N’Djamena was repulsed by the Chadian army just weeks before a presidential election which returned Deby for a fresh term in office.

He has ruled the landlocked central African oil producer since seizing power through a revolt from the east in 1990.

(Reuters)